Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Dairy Free Chocolate Pumpkin Pie Cups

It's pumpkin season, and tonight I'm going to share with you one of my favorite quick and easy dairy-free dessert strategies.  



In grad school, I briefly became obsessed with microwave mug cakes.  The great part about these sorts of things is that you can get a sweet fix without having to use up a ton of ingredients making (and then eating) a whole batch of cupcakes.  

When I moved into my current apartment, neither myself nor my roommate had a microwave of our own.  And being raised by vegetable steaming health nuts, it was hard to justify spending money on such an appliance.  

But I was still a writer with a late night sweet tooth, so I went back to a strategy I had discovered during a homemade candy phase a few years back.  It's the same basic formula using coconut oil I used to come up with the coconut bars I posted about last year.  

Dairy Free Chocolate Pumpkin Pie Cups
(*Note:  no measurements here--I made it in a hurry.  With ingredients like coconut oil and cocoa powder, I recommend adding a tablespoon at a time until the desired consistency is reached.  With almond milk, you don't need a lot--I only used it for better mixing.)

Chocolate Layer:

unsweetened coconut powder
coconut oil, melted.  
salt
liquid sweetener
almond milk

Pumpkin Layer:

1/2 can of pureed pumpkin
coconut oil
pumpkin pie spice
liquid sweetner
Medjool date
salted peanut butter

First, I mixed some coconut oil with salt, cocoa powder, and liquid sweetener.  I added some almond milk to achieve a creamy texture.  I poured this into the bottom of three cupcake pan cups. Because I was out of cupcake liners, so I cut up some squares of parchment paper and folded them into the pan. 

For the filling, I decided to use up a can of pureed pumpkin I bought a few weeks ago.  I mixed it with some coconut oil, almond milk, liquid sweetener, and pumpkin pie spice.  Finding the mixture a little bit runnier than optimal, I added a scoop of crunchy peanut butter.  Putting everything in my mini blender, I also added a pitted Medjool date.  

I then poured the filling into the cupcake pan and placed the whole thing in the freezer.  After about 40 minutes, I took them out and removed the liners.  I probably should have been more patient and waited a few extra hours to let the pumpkin harden a bit, but, well--you know how it is.  

No comments:

Post a Comment